


forever younger, growing older

by nasaplates



Category: K-pop, SEVENTEEN (Band)
Genre: Blood, Blood Drinking, Getting Back Together, M/M, Reconciliation, Reconciliation Sex, Vampires, Wall Sex, With A Twist, brief mention of mob violence, brief mentions of other 97 liners, entirely too many uses of the word golden, not your typical goth vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-04-08 10:00:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19104853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nasaplates/pseuds/nasaplates
Summary: Minghao doesn’t turn to him when he speaks. “You kept these.”





	forever younger, growing older

**Author's Note:**

> written for 97! at the Disco prompt Golden Days  
> this was a LOVELY fest BIG thank you to the mods <3
> 
> welcome music enthusiasts and fangbangers! I took this song in a possibly unexpected direction, but this entire story unfolded in front of me when I was deciding on which song to choose for this fest, and so here we are. I play pretty fast and loose with vampire lore, and have kind of ended up making a bit of my own spin on the whole concept, so don't expect your typical gothic interpretation, but I hope even die-hard vamp enthusiasts will enjoy ;)
> 
> thank you to len, dia, and mal for always being amazing betas, cheerleaders, and general backup crew. I couldn't do any of this without y'all <3

Mingyu pulls himself out of the pool, water cascading off his back, his swim trunks, his legs. He picks up a towel, warm from the sun, off the lounge chair, tips his head back, presses the fabric to his face for a long moment. He shivers happily at the way the Los Angeles summer air wraps around him like a blanket. It’s hot, August hot, but the blood in his veins flows freer in the sunlight and the heat.

Padding to the house through the open sliding glass door, the towel settled around his shoulders catching the drips from his hair, he sighs contentedly. Happiness was a far cry from where he is, but comfort was a neighbor, acceptance becoming a friend. His stomach rumbles and he hums in anticipation.

Two steps into the house and Mingyu sucks in a gasp. Minghao is sat on his couch, the box of photos Mingyu hadn’t bothered to put away before going for a swim open in his lap. The good mood Mingyu had been fostering shatters like Tiffany glass.

Minghao doesn’t turn to him when he speaks. “You kept these.” It wasn’t an accusation, but it felt carefully said, like it was trying not to reveal any kind of emotion. Mingyu wonders if that was why he wouldn’t look at him either. Mingyu panics, a bit, at what emotion he would see there, if he did.

Feet like lead blocks trapped in tar, Mingyu takes the handful of steps to the couch, standing just too far away to be called over Minghao’s right shoulder. Minghao has a photograph in his hands, yellowed with age, a Polaroid, old technology although it was top of the line when they’d taken the photo.

1979, Vegas, not written on the bottom because no one who would ever look at it would need the reminder. All of them young and golden from desert sun, Jaehyun on the left, smiling warmly at someone off camera. To his right a woman none of them knew prior to that night, went on to be a movie star in LA but Mingyu never liked her films. She was making starry eyes at Minghao, who was right next to her, looking as ethereal as ever, bright red suit and a button up barely buttoned in a pattern that should’ve been eye watering but he made look elegant. He didn’t know the future movie star was there at all, looking instead at Mingyu, in a teal suit with no shirt on at all underneath the jacket. Minghao had a hand on his jaw, unmistakably proprietary, Mingyu unmistakably in his thrall. Their mouths are closed, they’re not close to kissing, there isn’t anything unfit for the public happening. But the rest of the night plays out in Mingyu’s mind as if it’s an amateur porno instead of a fading Polarioid.

It’s the most damning photo in the box, in some ways, the least in others. Minghao is only in a handful of the rest, mostly because he’s the one who took them. Almost all of them are of Mingyu. There’s another photo, just next to Minghao’s left hand, of Mingyu’s arm and leg, the rest of his body draped casually with a sheet, his face a meer shadow, out of focus, almost out of frame. There are bite marks on his upper thigh, caressed by fabric. Minghao’s pinky finger is resting gently over his sleep curled hand. Mingyu wonders if he’s noticed. Anyone could’ve taken that picture, any number of potential lovers, in theory. But the photo of the two of them, at that party, well. It leaves no doubt, to anyone.

Minghao looks up at him, finally. If it weren’t for the shuttered eyes where they used to be on fire, you might believe the photo was a trick, that it was taken yesterday and someone had made the photo look aged, Photoshop or something. He looks exactly the same, like he hasn’t aged a day. Mingyu does too. The aging happened, but only in their hearts.

“Yeah,” Mingyu croaks, clears his throat, tries again. “Yeah, I did.” He tries for defiant, but mostly it comes out breathless.

They’d all agreed, a hundred years ago or more, whenever photos became common enough for it to matter, to burn the old ones every time they took on a new age. Kept the names, but never the birth certificates. Five years ago they’d become ‘97 liners, again, but this time with a 19 in front instead of an 18. Minghao was in China. Mingyu sat alone in front of a bonfire on an LA beach until the flames turned to ashes, remnants of a handful of photos intermingled with the driftwood, only ones of the others. Every time he tried to put a photo Minghao took of him into the flames he couldn’t help but think “This is how he saw me, then. This is what I was to him.” He kept them. If any of the others found the box when they came over to visit, they never said. Minghao wasn’t ever there to know. Well, until now.

Minghao is looking at him with an intensity Mingyu had almost forgotten, like he’s being read, like he’s a canvas Minghao is going to paint, like he’s a problem Minghao is going to solve. Mingyu’s had centuries of practice reading him but he still doesn’t know what’s going on in his head.

His stomach chooses that moment to rumble, loudly, echoing in the room. Minghao looks away, and Mingyu is grateful for the chance to escape to the kitchen. He opens the fridge and riffles through until he finds Minghao’s favorite, on reflex, pulls out something for himself. Their supplier has a sense of humor; juice boxes, complete with tiny straw and a cartoon bat. Minghao snorts when Mingyu hands him one, stabs the straw through the little foil circle with a small but genuine smile. They slurp in silence for a minute, Mingyu shuddering at the warmth that courses through him. He never has understood how that works; cold drink straight out of the fridge, and somehow it makes him feel a rush of heat from his head to his toes. And other places, too.

Mingyu opens his eyes, not having realized he closed them in the first place. Minghao is looking at him, irises rimmed in bright red. His mouth is slightly parted, and a crimson droplet of blood is beading at the corner of his mouth. Minghao slowly dips his tongue to catch the drop, showing a hint of sharp fang. This expression, Mingyu has no trouble reading. He swallows, reflexively, trying to fight the way his own fangs are aching. Trying to fight the way his cock is aching, too.

He’s going to lose, he’s already accepted this. He’s never been very good at restraint. He’s always been worst when it comes to the vampire sitting on his couch holding the evidence of a love that has lasted three hundred years, looking at him like he’s a meal.

“Why did you come back? Why now?” Mingyu asks, proud of himself for it, even though he can’t bring himself to look away from Minghao’s flushed red lips.

Minghao rises slowly, sets the box on the coffee table, strides toward him. There’s no black cloak, no slicked back hair, none of the Hollywood bullshit. He crosses into a beam of sunlight and all it does is make his skin glow golden. His fangs are still present, mouth parted to accommodate them. Mingyu doesn’t know if he could move, even if he wanted to. He doesn’t want to.

Minghao rests a hand along his jaw, gentle, light, and no less possessive for it. His thumb ghosts over Mingyu’s lips.

“Do you remember,” Minghao murmurs, close, slow, like an afterthought, a dream, eyes transfixed on Mingyu’s mouth. “Right before I...left, that summer?”

Mingyu nods, barely, distractedly. He knows that the question is rhetorical. They remember everything, all of them do. Four hundred years of memories is a heavy heavy weight.

“Do you remember the strip, driving up and down it in that convertible? The sun made you look like Apollo, like Gods the world has forgotten now.”

Mingyu licks his lips and Minghao’s thumb follows its path, pressing harder now, smearing the flesh.

“And that night, in the desert, during the lunar eclipse? Nothing in the world but us, and the sky, and the sand. You let me take you there, do you remember?”

The words set the insides of Mingyu’s thighs tingling, his cock swelling fuller, hard now, aching. The moon was a stunning sight, even for eyes that had already seen so much. Minghao above him, moving into him, looking down at him like he was the sun, that was more stunning still.

“When Bambam and I got on the wrong side of the mafia, do you remember that?” Mingyu swallows, and Minghao trails his hand lower, following the bob of Mingyu’s adam’s apple, curls his fingers around his throat with a gentle squeeze. “When you let me feed from you, because we didn’t have any blood stored, and you panicked and almost died from giving me too much?”

Minghao dragged his thumb back up to pull Mingyu’s jaw open wider, feather light on his still extended fangs. Mingyu licks the pad of his finger, lets him press it inside his mouth, wraps his lips around it and sucks, gently scraping his teeth along the skin before he lets it pop out of his mouth again. He’s rewarded with Minghao’s sharp inhale, the way he sways closer, breath hot on Mingyu’s chin.

“I told you,” Minghao says, with a gratifying touch of breathlessness, a fire in his eyes, “then, drunk on blood and pain and you, that I’d always paint you. That you’d always be my golden muse, my sun, my everything.”

Something clenches in Mingyu’s chest at the memory, at the way, after so much time, after lifetimes, after the rise and fall of kingdoms and eras and regimes, Minghao said the words instead of only acting on them. He nods. It feels important to nod. He wishes he could hand him the heart in his chest that hasn’t beat once in all the time they’ve known each other, instead.

“I meant it,” Minghao says, foreheads pressed together now, hand on Mingyu’s hip, hot where it touches his bare skin. “Jun,” he has to swallow, presses their foreheads harder, pulls Mingyu in so their hips are almost pressed together too. “Jun, he, after all that, you saw how he was.”

Mingyu did see how Jun was. The mafia didn’t stop with just shooting Minghao, after they realized there was something more than their accents that made them odd, in that desert world of sin. When the mafia found their connection to the blood supply at the hospital, they came after them, all of them, breaking into their sprawling compound on the outskirts of the city, guns drawn. They escaped, but it took bloodshed on both sides to do it. Junhui, well. He wasn’t the same, after. Feral, angry, getting involved with people the group on whole generally tried to avoid, preferring just living peaceful, happy lives with their odd diet, their seemingly endless lifespan.

Jun started feeding from people directly again, and when the police caught on to the bloody trail of murders he left behind, he fled to China. Minghao followed. Mingyu, mind full of guns and blood and Minghao dying in his arms, didn’t.

Minghao fists his hand in Mingyu’s hair and then smooths it out again, pulls at Mingyu’s waist until they’re slotted together, neither of them fully hard, now, but the potential still there. It’s electric, everywhere they touch.

“He needed me,” Minghao’s voice is firm, his eyes so close and bright that Mingyu can’t help but see the truth in them. “I couldn’t leave him like that. I know why you couldn’t come with, why you needed to be here. But before there was anyone, there was Junhui.”

Mingyu closes his eyes. He loves Junhui, would die for him in an instant. But hearing the words he was so afraid of, hearing that he’d finally taken Minghao from him, was a pain he didn’t think he could recover from. He slowly starts to pull away, disentangle himself from Minghao again, feeling the cold air rushing in like daggers against his skin.

Hands frame his face, firm, and he finds himself backed up until he’s against a wall, Minghao’s leg slotted between his, touching from hip to chest. He gasps and opens his eyes. Minghao is looking at him like he can’t decide if he wants to laugh or cry, and he shakes Mingyu’s head with his hands.

“No. No.” Another shake. “I love him,” he says, and Mingyu feels his eyelashes flutter before Minghao squeezes his hands against Mingyu’s skull in warning, maybe a little bit in desperation. “I love _you_ , Mingyu. I was always coming home to you. All these centuries and all these places and nowhere on this entire planet has ever been home without you.”

Mingyu feels the words lodge in his throat and trickle down, one by one, to wrap around his heart and heal wounds he hadn’t even admitted were still bleeding.

“I thought you knew,” Minghao says, voice high and tight, pained. “I’m sorry I didn’t know I needed to say it.”

There’s blood when they kiss, sharp and sweet, copper and salt. Mingyu nips Minghao’s bottom lip and then soothes the marks from his fangs with a swipe of his tongue. He lets Minghao press him harder back against the wall, lets him take control of the kiss, lets him push his thigh against his cock. He doesn’t resist, anymore. When Minghao ducks his head to leave a desperate mark against his jugular, he tips his head back and moans.

There are two master suites in the house, one big guest bedroom, too. All this time and all these lives have made money an easy game to play, even with Minghao diligently supporting his mother’s family line in any way he can.

Minghao fucks him right there, against the wall, sliding door still open and letting in the summer air, letting out their moans, and pleas, and screams.

It’s easier than Mingyu had expected, letting Minghao finger him open, letting him lift him up and push inside him. Almost forty years had passed, since Vegas, since Minghao had pressed his hands against his skin, had bitten marks into his flesh, and rocked against him like this. But the way Mingyu wraps his legs around his hips and welcomes him into his body like a priest welcoming a God into a temple is the same. The way Minghao gasps his name like a benediction when he comes is the same, too.

They end up laying naked on the tiles next to the pool, sun blazing over their heads. The neighbors could see them, if they tried, from an upstairs window, but Mingyu is long past caring, and he doesn’t bother to mention it to Minghao. Shame goes out the window when you’ve had the same body for as long as they both have.

Minghao is trailing one long-fingered hand in the water, Mingyu tucked against his side, head turned so he can watch the ripples along the surface of the pool. Everything is warm, like this, a golden cast to the world. Memories that Mingyu has been afraid to pull out and touch for fear of chilling his heart are golden now, too.

He’ll ask, later, when the sun goes down, about Minghao’s time in China, about Junhui. And he’ll tell, too, about Bang Chan picking up an Australian accent, and Seokmin saying fuck it and finally joining the cast of a musical like he’s wanted to for decades.

But for now, they bask together, two vampires in the sun, humming in the light, Minghao painting patterns with damp fingers along Mingyu’s golden skin.

**Author's Note:**

> let me know what you think in the comments, and/or twitter [ @nasaplates ] and curiouscat [/nasaplates ]


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